The MAD Podcast with Matt Turck

• Guillermo Rauch: Why Software Development Will Never Be the Same

  In this episode, Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch goes deep on how V0, their text-to-app platform, has already generated over 100 million applications and doubled Vercel’s user base in under a year.Guillermo reveals how a tiny SWAT team inside Vercel built V0 from scratch, why “vibe coding” is making software creation accessible to everyone (not just engineers), and how the AI Cloud is automating DevOps, making cloud infrastructure self-healing, and letting companies expose their data to AI agents in just five lines of code.You’ll hear why “every company will have to rethink itself as a token factory,” how Vercel’s Next.js went from a conference joke to powering Walmart, Nike, and Midjourney, and why the next billion app creators might not write a single line of code. Guillermo breaks down the difference between vibe coding and agentic engineering, shares wild stories of users building apps from napkin sketches, and explains how Vercel is infusing “taste” and best practices directly into their AI models.We also dig into the business side: how Vercel’s AI-powered products are driving explosive growth, why retention and margins are strong, and how the company is adapting to a new wave of non-technical users. Plus: the future of MCP servers, the security challenges of agent-to-agent communication, and why prompting and AI literacy are now must-have skills.VercelWebsite - https://vercel.comX/Twitter - https://x.com/vercelGuillermo RauchLinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/rauchgX/Twitter - https://x.com/rauchgFIRSTMARKWebsite - https://firstmark.comX/Twitter - https://twitter.com/FirstMarkCapMatt Turck (Managing Director)LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/turck/X/Twitter - https://twitter.com/mattturck(00:00) Intro (02:08) What Is V0 and Why Did It Take Off So Fast? (04:10) How Did a Tiny Team Build V0 So Quickly? (07:51) V0 vs Other AI Coding Tools (10:35) What is Vibe Coding? (17:05) Is V0 Just Frontend? Moving Toward Full Stack and Integrations (19:40) What Skills Make a Great Vibe Coder? (23:35) Vibe Coding as the GUI for AI: The Future of Interfaces (29:46) Developer Love = Agent Love (33:41) Having Taste as Developer (39:10) MCP Servers: The New Protocol for AI-to-AI Communication (43:11) Security, Observability, and the Risks of Agentic Web (45:25) Are Enterprises Ready for the Agentic Future? (49:42) Closing the Feedback Loop: Customer Service and Product Evolution (56:06) The Vercel AI Cloud: From Pixels to Tokens (01:10:14) How Vercel Adapts to the ICP Change? (01:13:47) Retention, Margins, and the Business of AI Products (01:16:51) The Secret Behind Vercel Last Year Growth (01:24:15) The Importance of Online Presence (01:30:49) Everything, Everywhere, All at Once: Being CEO 101 (01:34:59) Guillermo's Advice to Younger Self

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• Inside Canva’s $3B ARR AI Design Rocketship — CTO Brendan Humphreys on Magic Studio & Canva Code

  Canva just announced $3 billion in ARR, 230 million monthly active users, and 24 million paying subscribers—including 95% of the Fortune 500. Even more impressive? They’ve been profitable for seven years while growing at 40–50% per year. In this episode, Canva’s Head of Engineering, Brendan Humphreys, reveals how he went from employee #12 to leading 2,300 engineers across continents, and why Canva’s “pragmatic excellence” lets them ship AI features at breakneck speed—like launching Canva Code to 100 million users in just three months.Brendan shares the story of Canva’s AI journey: building an in-house ML team back in 2017, acquiring visual AI startups like Kaleido and Leonardo AI, and why they use a hybrid of OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and their own foundation models. He explains how Canva’s App Store gives niche AI startups instant access to millions, and why their $200M Creator Fund is designed to reward contributors in the AI era. You’ll also hear how AI tools like Copilot are making Canva’s senior engineers 30% more productive, why “vibe coding” isn’t ready for prime time, and the unique challenges of onboarding junior engineers in an AI-driven world.We also dig into Canva’s approach to technical debt, scaling from 12 to 5,000 employees, and why empathy is a core engineering skill at Canva. CanvaWebsite - https://www.canva.comX/Twitter - https://x.com/canvaBrendan HumphreysLinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendanhumphreysX/Twitter - https://x.com/brendanhFIRSTMARKWebsite - https://firstmark.comX/Twitter - https://twitter.com/FirstMarkCapMatt Turck (Managing Director)LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/turck/X/Twitter - https://twitter.com/mattturck(00:00) Intro (01:14) Canva’s Mind-Blowing Growth and Profitable Journey (03:41) Why Brendan Left Atlassian to Join a Tiny Startup (06:17) What Being a Founder Taught Brendan About Leadership (07:24) Growing with Canva: From 12 Employees to 2,300 Engineers (10:02) How Canva Runs a Global Team from Sydney to Europe (13:16) Is AI a Threat or a Superpower for Canva? (15:22) The Real Story Behind Canva’s AI and Machine Learning Team (17:23) How Canva Ships New AI Features So Fast (19:19) A Tour of Canva’s Latest AI-Powered Products (21:03) From Design Tool to All-in-One Productivity Platform (26:21) Keeping Up the Pace: How Canva Moves So Quickly (30:22) The Future: AI Agents, Copilots, and Smarter Workflows (33:14) How AI Tools Are Changing the Way Engineers Work (35:47) Rethinking Hiring and Training in the Age of AI (37:01) Why Empathy Matters in Engineering at Canva (39:41) Building vs. Buying: How Canva Chooses Its AI Tech (41:23) Lessons Learned: Technical Debt and Scaling Pains (51:18) Shipping Fast Without Breaking Things (53:08) What’s Next: AI Video, New Features, and Big Ambitions

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